How to hit your goals this quarter

With a new quarter starting, its always a good idea to take stock of where you are in your business and to plan ahead for the next quarter and the remaining year ahead. I also like to review my annual goals each quarter and check that they are still relevant.

So, what should you do to review your business each quarter?

I like to call it the reflect and review process! You want to look back over the previous financial quarter and see what has happened in your business and use that to determine what your focus should be for the upcoming quarter.

For example, if my annual goal is to increase my profit margins by 5% this year, and my quarterly review shows that I’m only achieving a 2% increase to date, I know I need to spend time in the next quarter reviewing my pricing and my costs to see where I can take action that will have a positive impact on my profit margin.

Your review should tell you if you hit your goals for the quarter or not. You need solid financial information for this, so you can look at the facts and not estimates of where your business is at. You should reflect on:

How much money did you make in  total in Q1 2021? What is the breakdown by product or services to see what is our best selling item?

How much money did you make each month in Q1? Did you hit your monthly revenue targets?

Compare your 2021 numbers to 2020 and calculate your growth percentage. Can you use this to forecast out your sales for the remainder of the year? Was there a trend in your growth rate?

How much did you spend this quarter? Looking at your key costs and see can they be directly linked to income generating activity or are they overhead? Is there any efficiencies to be gained in removing costs or switching service providers?

Where are you with our KPIs, both financial and operational?

What activities contributed to your success? This should not just be about financial activities, think about hours worked, marketing activities, team members availability etc. Every business will gauge success differently, so what is important to your business?

What activities did not contribute to success? This is what we typically do not pay attention to which is why this question is so important! Activities not contributing to your success should be reviewed so it can be determined why you are doing them at all! Can they be removed from your business or tweaked to get a better result?

What did you do well? Again, this shouldn’t just be a financial measure, maybe its staff engagement or customer service that stood out this quarter. It’s always worth asking yourself WHY after you’ve identified what you did well. Why was something a success? Is it because its an area of your business that you enjoy working in more than another? Is it because you have a new team member with a new skillset? Did you introduce a new process or system that is saving time in the business? Document this and see how you can leverage these things for future growth and profit.

What did you postpone or what have you been putting off? This will be a critical thing. What we put off are the things that will be responsible for our success. This might seem like madness! But they are usually the things we are uncomfortable with, so we delay doing them. For example, hiring a new team member, a major marketing decision or investing in equipment or technology. These are actually the things that will move our business forward. A new team member means we can delegate more of our delivery work, leaving us as the CEO free to focus on the visionary work or creating new products and services.

What are some of the lessons you have learnt? There is always learning as a business owner and entrepreneur. Reflecting on those experiences that required us to learn will remind us of our growth. Perhaps there was something unexpected that happened this quarter and you were forced to act before you were ready. Did you gain confidence or clarity from the situation or learn a bit more about yourself as a business owner?

Once you have reflected on the previous quarter, you can set goals for the upcoming quarter more easily.

 I always recommend the FAS Goal method- Flexible, Actionable and Specific.

Flexible- when you set your goal, you should always have an element of stretch to it. So if your goal is a revenue level of €5k per month. You know that to achieve this would be great! But if you achieve €4k this would still be a good measure of success, if you achieve €6k this would be an excellent measure of success against your original goal. Having flexibility in our goals stops us being complacent. I’ve seen so many business owners give up on a financial goal because they didn’t reach it precisely. Instead of looking at the success they did have, they lose focus on the goal entirely. This is like starting all over again. A black and white approach like this will stifle your business before you give it a chance to move forward.

Actionable- goals need to be quantifiable. You need to be clear on the action that you need to take to hit your goal. Using the example above, if your goal is to hit €5k in revenue a month, what do you need to do to achieve this? How many discovery calls and client leads do you need to follow up on and close to achieve this number? Are you going to create a call list and take action each day? What weekly actions in terms of client delivery do you need to take to move to you towards your goal?

Specific- clarity breaths action. When you know what to do and how to do it, you will take action. Specific consistent daily action will move you forward. If you do this, it’s impossible not to improve as a business owner! While it may take time, this is why you have set flexible goals to you can allow yourself to learn and adapt your approach on a regular basis to achieve better results for your business.

I’d love to hear more about your own goal setting process. Do you review it on a regular basis throughout the year to ensure you are still on track? What is your biggest stress about setting financial goals for your business each year?